Their Music Is A Blessing

It was five years ago this month that Chuck and I first visited The National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was a wonderful, powerful and influential experience for us. (I wrote about it here.) Right after that first visit I went in search of Yiddish music. That was how I discovered and fell in love with The Barry Sisters.

Born in the 1920s in the Bronx, New York, Clara and Minnie Bagelman began performing as children. They eventually took the stage names Claire and Merna Barry. First generation Jewish girls of Ashkenazi descent, they sang in Yiddish, Hebrew, English and other languages. They became international stars known as The Barry Sisters. They appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show sixteen times, so chances are good I saw them more than once. But unfortunately my strongest memories of that show are mostly of The Beatles, Topo Gigio and various comedians.

Claire and Merna have powerful, beautiful voices. Their singing can be haunting, moving, exhilarating and charming. Yes, some of the arrangements are certainly of an era and to some, may feel a little dated; a little campy; a little schmaltzy. But I grew up listening to Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Mottola, Perry Como, Doris Day, Tony Bennett, Patti Page - - - you get the idea! So when I first heard The Barry Sisters, I was an immediate fan.

The photo above is one of my favorites. It was used on their album “Their Greatest Yiddish Hits”. That was the album that drew me in. You can still find many reissued and compilation albums for The Barry Sisters on Amazon and elsewhere.

Sadly, Merna died in 1976. She was only 51 years of age.
Her sister Claire died last Monday. She was 94.
Zichrona liveracha ~ May their memories be a blessing.

The Jewish Daily Forward published a nice write-up about Claire’s passing.

Here is Claire’s more comprehensive obituary from the Music section of The New York Times.

And here is Merna’s 1976 obituary, also from The New York Times.

Aleha hashalom ~ Peace be upon them



This is one of my favorite songs by The Barry Sisters...

U2 on the Couch

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon launched yesterday and it was fantastic!
As I Tweeted last night: "Jimmy Fallon could have done a Mic Drop at the end of the show and retired! Thank Heavens he didn't!"
This moment was one of many exceptionally fine ones.
Enjoy!



Or go here to watch the video: U2 On Jimmy Fallon - Ordinary Love

Brave!

I love this song.
I really like this video.
Enjoy!




And in case you missed a highlight of a particularly good Grammy Awards Show, here is the marvelous Carole King performing with Sara Bareilles!




Thank you Carole King!

Thank you Sara Bareilles!

Glenn Murphy, Oisin O’Callaghan & Ronan Scolard

University College Dublin brought Glenn Murphy from Waterford, Oisin O’Callaghan from Cork & Ronan Scolard from Dublin, Ireland together. They have exquisite harmonies and strong voices. And they have created lovely arrangements. Enjoy!


I’ll Be There For You


500 Miles


When Somebody Loved Me

Livin’ On A Prayer & Sweet Dreams

This is great!
It made me smile, laugh and applaud!
Enjoy!

The Best

Here’s the trail of breadcrumbs. Chuck subscribes to The New York Times. That means in addition to the Sunday newspaper being delivered to our home, we also get full digital access. My favorite way to read the Times is on our iPad. Near the beginning of December I clicked on the Times icon. Before the edition refreshed I spotted an article about a blogger with the phrase “big ideas”. Then it disappeared and the new edition filled in. Some searching brought me back to the article which had caught me eye. Here’s the piece.

When I finished that article about 28 year old Maria Popova I clicked through to her website “Brain Pickings”. I was hooked. I quickly added the site to my RSS feeds and followed it on Twitter and Facebook.

Tonight I e-mailed my sister Gail in Georgia and mentioned it to her. That was when I realized I had never posted about Brain Pickings here. For which, I sincerely apologize!

Calling Maria Popova a blogger may be technically true but she is more accurately an editor, a collector, a curator, a librarian of all that is interesting. But not interesting the way CNN Headline News or USA Today are when you are stuck in an airport on a layover. Nor is Brain Pickings interesting the way BuzzFeed and Gawker can be. Brain Pickings is classier, deeper and draws you in with beauty, history and brilliance.

Brain Pickings has a separate page called The Literary Jukebox. Ms. Popova pairs a song with a quote or a poem. Sounds devilishly simple doesn’t it? I don’t believe it is and once again she makes it something special. Here is my absolute favorite combination which joins
John Steinbeck and Natalie Merchant. I find it both inspiring and beautiful.

Not every single Brain Pickings post is fascinating to me. But I am always happy to see the yellow avatar pop up in my streams. And I find it comforting to know that someone is working so assiduously to bring important and wonderful things to the attention of an ever widening audience.

Call Your Zeyde!

Another great video!
This one is definitely inspired by Sarah Silverman’s “The Great Schlep” from 2008. But this one does not include expletives and it’s done to “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. The singer is Michelle Citrin. If you need help with the words, you can go to the Call Your Zeyde website and click on the link for the lyrics.



Live your values.
Love your country.
VOTE!

Pachelbel Rant

Loved this!

SoundHound

SoundHound works. It kicks Shazam to the corner and back. Not only does it identify the music quickly and accurately, it is content rich - including lyrics. And it’s free!

The Ninth Night

We went to Christmas Revels at Harvard on Wednesday.
If there was such a thing as the “ninth night” of Chanukah, that would have been the night.
But there is no ninth night.

Revels this year had a skeleton figure which moved silently and somberly throughout the show - even dancing in the lobby of Memorial Hall during” Lord Of The Dance”. Ironically, the skeleton was played by a young, lithe woman. To me, the skeleton embodied “death”; the program ascribed “time”. One could make a case for synonymousness.

Both Chuck and I found the skeleton’s presence disturbing. That’s because we are acutely conscious of death, now that Chuck’s aunt is dying.

We are all dying. Trite and cliched but it is natheless true. As we come to terms with Tanta’s cancer and begin to work with hospice, how can we be anything else but aware of death?

So to attend Revels, a celebratory tradition for us going back decades, and be repeatedly confronted with death, when what we wanted was distraction and delight, was painful. It didn’t matter that I spent intermission and one quarter of the second act on my cell phone with caregivers, an agency and an emergency room. When that incident was resolved I wanted to go back to good cheer. No matter how rousing the songs nor how robust the audience participation, there she was, the skeleton in our midst.

Perhaps it was coincidence or perhaps a message from the universe and, most likely, of universal importance. But it was more than we wanted; frankly, more than we needed.

Tanta will turn 89 next week. Her doctor, who says he is always wrong about such monumental predictions, says it will not be a year and it will not be six months.

There will likely be no 90th birthday celebration for Tanta.

Just as there is no ninth night.

Not A Creature Was Stirring

...He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight -
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Whether it was written by Clement Clarke Moore or Henry Livingston, Jr. “Twas The Night Before Christmas” has a special place in my heart. Less as a poem and more as the beautiful musical arrangement by Harry Simeone and sung by his Chorale. I can still see my Dad standing in our living room in Warwick, Rhode Island. The room was illuminated by electric candles in the four windows, wax tapers on the mantlepiece, the crackling wood fire below, the twinkling lights on the Christmas Tree and the single golden bulb inside the manger. Dad would be singing along with the album, as it was spinning on the stereo. All was calm, bright, safe and right with world.

May we all know such peace and joy again...

Merry Christmas!

Flash!

I admit I get a kick out of the flashmob phenomenon. This one from Minnesota is a holiday delight!
Enjoy!

A History of the Sky

I came across this video over on My Jewish Learning. As I watched it, I first found it interesting, then fascinating and ultimately quite calming. It has a lovely meditative quality about it.

It really is best viewed as large as possible and with the highest resolution.

Enjoy!

A New Case Of You

Joni Mitchell’s album “Blue” came out in 1971. I damn near played the grooves off it. When CDs came out in the 1980s, “Blue” was one of the first CDs I purchased. When we got our first iPod six years ago, yes, “Blue” was one of the first albums we loaded.

I was chatting recently with a friend and we agreed that many covers of great songs fall flat. Tonight, I heard a brilliant interpretation of one of the songs off “Blue”: “A Case Of You”. It was performed by James Blake on BBC Radio 1. It did not fall flat. It was haunting and beautiful.

Enjoy...

HHH + A

Oh I know it’s only mid July and there is a whole slew of summer left to go, but this heat and humidity has already gotten to me. Far too soon, I know.

Jump shift:

You love Adele, right? Of course you do. We have her albums “19” and “21” and love them both. Recently she performed in the iTunes London Festival. It is a delight! You can watch it here. And if you reside in the Northern Hemisphere I suggest an air conditioned room and an iced beverage of your choosing.

It Felt Like A Sunday

Chuck and I met 26 years ago next month. In September we will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. In the intervening years between meeting and marrying we became friends and fell in love. Shortly before we met, Stephen Sondheim wrote the Broadway musical “Sunday In The Park With George”. We were smitten with it. Song after song moved us; touched us in some deep way. The musical was inspired by Georges Seurat’s spectacular painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. In fact, the painting becomes a scrim in the musical production.

Back in the late 80s, right around the falling in love stage, we began thinking about visiting Seurat’s original painting. We even looked into a weekend plane trip from Massachusetts to Chicago, where the painting resides in a museum. But the cost of such a trip was prohibitive. When we drove across the country from Seattle to the east coast back in 1998, we were pushing to make a deadline. We were very disappointed to find ourselves traveling through Chicago around midnight.

So when the Amtrak adventure began to take shape we realized this might be our best chance. The only potential glitch was the timing. Because the railroad tracks are owned mostly by freight companies, Amtrak passenger trains often have to wait their turn to let long freights have priority. That can mean significant delays. We were lucky. “The Lake Shore Limited” arrived in Chicago on time, leaving us with nearly a four hour layover. We stashed our carry-on luggage in a locker at Union Station and hailed a taxi in the pouring rain.

Next stop: The Art Institute of Chicago.

We stepped out of the warm rain and into the cool serenity of the Art Institute. We paid our admission fee and asked for directions to the painting. In just a few moments we were in the gallery devoted to it and a few of Seurat’s other works. We were overcome. We had dreamed of this moment for almost a quarter century. We sat on a long wooden bench and tried to take it all in. Group after group of elementary school students bustled in with notebooks in one hand, folding stools in the other. They plopped down in front of the enormous image and listened while the docents explained the painting and the magic of pointillism.

I wanted to take a photograph. Chuck found a guard and inquired if non-flash photography was allowed. “Yes”, she replied. I took some photographs. We sat down again; still feeling overwhelmed. The guard looked at us quizzically and we felt compelled to quietly explain how we came to be there. Families walked in and out; individual visitors, many wearing the now common headphones playing the audio tours, stopped, looked and moved on. Most everyone seemed interested. No one seemed quite as taken as we were. But then, very few of them had been looking forward to that moment for such a long time.

Five Items

Egypt:
I’m an enormous fan of and believer in Democracy. I want the people of Egypt to participate in their government and to thrive economically. I want that for them now.

Maria Schneider:
Actress Maria Schneider passed away this week at the age of 58. Upon hearing the news, director Bernardo Bertolucci said he regrets that "he never got the chance" to apologize to Ms. Schneider who, at the age of 19, starred in his “Last Tango In Paris”. Yeah, when you only have 39 years it's hard to find the time. May Ms. Schneider rest in peace.

Super Bowl:
My Dad was a football fan. One of the teams he liked was the Green Bay Packers. I rooted for them tonight during what turned out to be a surprisingly good and exciting Super Bowl XLV. Oh, the Packers won!

Super Bowl Halftime Show:
Wow. But not in a good way. I like the Black Eyed Peas just fine. But the sound engineers or technicians at Fox dropped the ball - pun intended. The light show aspects were pretty cool, especially the red heart. But I kept waiting for the wowee-zowee big moment. Perhaps I am jaded. I will say I am delighted that there were no wardrobe malfunctions. Heaven knows I couldn’t suffer through another kerfuffle like the Jackson-Timberlake incident of 2004.

Mouse:
We live with three cats. Yet it was Chuck who spotted the mouse strolling along the edge of the room and pausing to watch the Super Bowl on TV. Chuck had to capture the mouse in a jar and externalize it. The cats seemed wildly disinterested. Not that I like what happens when the cats are interested in or are successful in catching a mouse. But they could have at least twitched an ear or lolled their heads in the general direction of the dang mouse!


P.S. I didn’t mention snow! Not even once! Well, except for just now... ;o)

NSFW

Many months ago our niece Kate told us about a YouTube video by Cee Lo Green. We had been talking about break up songs - I can’t remember why - and she said Cee Lo Green had a “classic”. Ever thoughtful, she did warn us about its content. Then she told us the name of the song was "F*ck You". We looked it up and found the following (absolutely NSFW!) video - which I thoroughly enjoyed:



Then today I followed a link from Ten Pounds Of Awesome to the ASL (American Sign Language) version of the song. It too is totally NSFW, but I loved it. In fact I sent the links to my sister-in-law because our nephew, her son, is studying ASL in high school. Enjoy!

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

I just heard about a fabulous FlashMob Wedding which took place back in mid-December at The Pru in Boston. It’s sweet and uplifting. And, being a proud liberal from Massachusetts, I loved what the woman who officiated had to say. The quality of the video is very good, so do click to watch it at full screen.

This & That Round-Up

: : She’s back and she’s still very funny - “earthy” this time, but very funny.

: : She flew practically from one pole to the other to meet Father Christmas in Rovaniemi, Lapland in Finland.

: : He has spent the last quarter century as a non-smoker. Coincidentally, so have I.

: : I wish I could turn back the clock so you all could go see what was, hands down, the best Revels ever.

: : Isabella weighs 7 lbs, 10.5 oz / 3.47 kgs and is just dandy!

: : This is the same way our relative met & married his new wife - minus the coverage in People Magazine and the chateau in Switzerland.